Monday, October 22, 2012

PROLOGUE
A concentration camp is hard to define, it differs totally from any other
aspects of life and human relationship. It is in the words of a witness at the
Eichmann trial in 1961, "like another planet". In the Germany of 1938 there were
prisons for law-breakers just as in other countries, but the concentration camps
were already emitting those poisonous exhalations which were stifling not only
the law but man's conscience as well. Just before the plebiscite following the
Anschluss in 1938, Heinrich Himmler, Reichsführer SS and head of the
Gestapo, visited Austria. Knowing what was about to happen there, and that the
existing concentration camps in Germany, especially Dachau, were full to
capacity, he was looking for a site which could be exploited economically and
which also would be suitable for certain very special requirements. He wished in
fact to build a concentration camp which would be worthy of the Thousand Year
Reich, and which would last as long. One of the places he visited was the
Wienergraben quarries, owned by the Municipal Authorities of Vienna,
which had supplied paving stones for that city.

Mauthausen quarry, Himmler probably looked at

Himmler was impressed by
what he saw. The quarries, which could be worked extensively, nestled in the
lush, hilly countryside on the north bank of the Danube about 106 miles upstream
from Vienna and fourteen miles downstream from Linz. More important, the small
village of Mauthausen nearby boasted a railway station. Himmler made his
choice.
What exactly had Himmler in mind when he made this trip in 1938,
during a period when Germany was proclaiming peace and future stability to the
world, was only clear to him alone. It is now known that before he left his
headquarters, plans wee being prepared for the organisation of an enormous chain
of concentration camps stretching right across Europe. The mechanic's of these
mills of destruction can be traced back directly to Himmler. It is often said
that he was completely subservient to the Führer and incapable of making
independent decisions, far from it. Himmler had his own cherished plans for
exploiting the concentration camps, less as a contribution to the war effort
than as a means of financing the SS should it ever lose the support of the
head of state.

he quarry at Mauthausen during the camps operation"

To centralise the
administration of all these SS activities, Himmler created the "Deutsche
Erd-und Steinwerke" (DEST) and the "Deutsche Ausrüstungswerke" (DAW),
which was placed under his ex-naval friend Oswald Pohl. During the war Pohl's
powers were extended to include responsibility for the
"Wirtschaftsverwaltungshauptamt" (WVHA). Even Glücks, the head of "Amt
D" (concentration camps) was answerable to him.
Although Hitler must
ultimately be held responsible for the crimes, he never took any interest in
what he considered to be the tiresome business of administration. This he left
to his friends, who tried to outdo one another in brutality so as to preserve a
united front to the more intelligent up-and-coming young officers. Himmler
certainly showed more ability to plan ahead than did most of those who
surrounded him, one example being the camps and what happened in them. When the
idea was first conceived he may not have foreseen the extent to which excess
would become irreversible. But all this was still in the future. Mauthausen had
not yet been built. The men and women it was to engulf were still following
their everyday occupations all over Europe, unaware of the storm which was about
to break.
[As a footnote, that Himmler at the end took poison in British
captivity, is hardly credible, he was killed by their Agents, if one just
examines the events that evolved, the claim that he had a phial of cyanide
secreted in one of his teeth is beyond belief, sic]
THE BEGINNING
On the 8
August 1938 the first 300 prisoners arrived from the Dachau concentration camp,
accompanied by about 80 members of the SS, in Mauthausen. They were classified
by the SS as "criminal" or "antisocial" German and Austrian male prisoners.
During October, Mauthausen was run as a satellite camp of Dachau, and these
first prisoners kept until 18 October 1938, their own Dachau registration
numbers. By the end of 1938, the SS transferred over 1000 prisoners from the
camps of Dachau and Sachsenhausen. Even before the conclusion of the lease
agreement with the city of Vienna, the SS took over on 25 May 1938 in the
immediate vicinity of Mauthausen from the municipality of Langenstein a
Stone-Quarry at Gusen, apart from that in 1938 the adjacent quarry at Kastenhof
was also acquired on a long term lease basis. The acquisition of the Mauthausen
quarry did not lead to the founding of its concentration camp in 1938, but late
in 1939 on the Initiative of the DESt-Operation for the establishment of the
Gusen camp which had local quarries in its vicinity. The Gusen concentration
camp was opened on 25 May 1940 and administrated in the following years,
together with the Mauthausen on a sort of dual system (Doppellager).
In these
early days the labour force was provided with modern tools and machinery by the
SS construction units of the DEST and DAW. Witnesses say that after the SS had
moved in, the civilian quarry company was allowed to remain at Mauthausen. If
this was the case, it is likely that some of their equipment would have been
used by the prisoners. Conditions were still comparatively easy. The rougher
methods of construction were yet to come. A small temporary narrow-gauge railway
was installed in order to speed up the extraction of granite, but the prisoners
still had to unload the granite at the foot of the stairway in the quarry and
carry the individual stones up to the camp site.The first building to be erected on
the flat summit of the hill was the Commandantur, or offices of the camp
command. Theses offices included the "politische Abteilung", or the
political section, where the Gestapo files on the inmates were kept. The
Commandantur lay outside the camp, but overlooked the garage yard and, at the
extreme left, of the main entrance to the camp. The hospital for the SS, on the
slope outside the camp, was completed early. It was modern in style and very
well equipped, with excellent ventilation, complete sterilising units, a
laboratory and therapy treatment lamps. Prisoners in need of treatment were
admitted to this hospital until the end of 1939. The greatest single effort of
those months seems to have been the building of the awesome main entrance with
its huge wooden doors flanked by watch towers, and the tall granite wall which
separated the camp from the Commandantur buildings and towered over the huge SS
garage yards.

Mauthausen inmates labour in the Quarry

Within the camp the
prisoner's area was ringed with high tension wiring. During 1939 two prisoners
were shot while trying to escape, one was hanged, five electrocuted and one
killed in a working accident. These deaths were recorded in a separate book
entitled "Unnatural Deaths", which was locked up in the political section. In
addition to this there were 434 "natural deaths", which were accounted for to
some extent by a typhus epidemic in the the camp. Other deaths were caused by
the brutality of the SS. As Mauthausen did not yet possess a crematorium, the
bodies were disposed of at a civilian crematorium some miles away in Steyr. The
increasingly frequent journeys between Mauthausen and Steyr did not pass
unnoticed by the civilian population, who made representations to the Gauleiter,
Dr. Gustav Brachmann. The Berlin authorities too were concerned after the war
was declared September 1939 to keep the good opinion was one thing, to
precipitate an embarrassing clash with Austrian country folk quite another. This
forced Theodor Eike to relieve the Commandant of Mauthausen, Sturmbannführer
(Major) Sauer and his Adjutant Kramer from their positions and sent them
elsewhere. [Sauer was extremely bitter about this measure, until the middle of
the war was Sauer (prnounced "sour") again entrusted with functions in
concentration camps, although 'promoted' as commander of the KZ Riga-Kaiserwald,
he was never the same, and at the start of 1945 transferred to Ravensbrück,
Sauer was killed in action on 3 May 1945 in the vicinity of Berlin, sic]
It
was Kramer's duty to inform the relatives of a prisoner when death occurred, and
provide them with a death certificate. At first it was possible for them to see
the body before removing it either for burial or cremation. Even after
hostilities this practice was continued for the relatives of German prisoners
and to some extent for the few Poles who were admitted between October and
December 1939. Kramer would meet the German mourners at the gate, tender his
condolence and add that the dead man had been a 'model prisoner', due for
release from custody in a day or so for good conduct, but he had unfortunately
died of a heart attack, (or pneumonia or some other disease) "despite the expert
care of the SS medical staff". When it became apparent , and it soon did, that
the prisoner had died from other causes than those specified, Kramer evaded the
relatives inquiries by sealing the coffin before inspection. "It was necessary",
he said,"to avoid the possibility of infection".
There is no evidence that
prisoners lacked adequate food at this time. Supplies were delivered to the camp
according to the number of inmates, and the scale of provisions was periodically
reviewed. Although tempering with the prisoners rations took place at the camp,
the amounts despatched to December 1939 per 100 inmates compared very favourable
with those for the years which were to follow.
Nor is there evidence of any
plans for a gas chamber during the early stages of the building of Mauthausen.
Indeed, before the outbreak of the war it is unlikely that either the camp
command or Oranienburg, the Berlin concentration camp headquarters, had any idea
of the hideous installations which later on were to complete and perfect the
machine of death. Those were to come later. By December 1939 the building of the
SS barracks, the Commandantur, garages and prisoners barracks was completed.
Work on the remaining parts of the camp continued until the liberation in 1945,
at the enormous and terrible cost of the lives of its thousands of inmates. This
monstrous, carefully stone fortress, encircled by piercing floodlights, struck
coldness and fear into the prisoners as they arrived at the gates.

Mauthausen concentration camp from 1938 to
1945 had only two commanders, as compared to other camps, this was a low low
staff turnover for commission officers responsible for the administration of
KZ-Camps. Sturmbannführer Albert Sauer, who was from the establishment of the
camp in Agust 1938 to February 1939 entrusted with this function, but was
replaced by Franz Ziereis on 1 April 1939 who remained in this position longer
than any other commandant until May 1945. Who was Franz Ziereis?
He was known
as "baby face Ziereis" because of his soft features. He was neither tall nor
heavy built, but of his general appearance was handsome and much enhanced by his
elegant and superbly-kept uniform. Born of a humble family in Munich 1905, he
had one brother and two sisters. When little more than eighteen years old, he
enrolled in the 19th Bavarian Infantry Regiment of the Reichswehr, in which he
remained until September 1936. When he left he held the rank of First
Lieutenant. He immediately re-entered the service, this time as a training
officer in the Waffen SS- the 4th Standarte in Oranienburg- where he was
promoted to Haupsturmführer, the grade with which he succeeded Sauer as
Commandant of Mauthausen. In 1941 he was promoted to Sturmbannführer (Major), in
1943 to Obersturmbannführer (Lt.-Colonel) and finally in 1944 to
Standartenführer (Colonel).
In addition of his officers pay, Ziereis received
300 RM per month from DEST for hiring out prisoners to civilian
contractors.
The Meserschmidt factories paid a daily hire of 8 RM per man to
Oswald Pohl's SS economic administration. Ziereis's share of this was only 50
Pfennings per man, about which he complained bitterly. He even received his
share of the cost of a prisoner's visit to the camp brothel.
What sort of man
was Ziereis? He must have possessed some curious power which enabled him to
remain for so long in this position of authority, in control of an enterprise
worth million of Reichsmarks. Yet he was neither powerful with the "top brass",
nor influential with them. Indeed the political section of the camp conducted
itself with such independence from Gestapo headquarters that this was a constant
source of irritation to him. His history does not show that he possessed any
particular driving force, nor an above average intelligence. He was a model
husband and a devoted father, a reasonable sober man, with none of the positive
or latent homosexual tendencies that were common with men of his position. His
vice, if that is how it can be described, lay in his inexhaustible homicidal
activities, and in this he excelled.
His deputy was Georg Bachmayer, who was
in charge of the Garrison SS, although the nominal chief was one by the name of
Zutter. There is an impression that Ziereis was always suspicious of the
raucous, heavy-drinking Bachmayer and that he feared he might be overshadowed
and eventually replaced by him.

Franz Ziereis, Commandant of Mauthausen, 1939-1945

The top
administration of the concentration camps was in the hands of the most ruthless
men of the Nazi regime. Under an agreement dating from December 1939, the
economic administration came under Oswald Pohl, but depended finally upon
Himmler, while discipline was maintained through Gücks, the inspector of
Concentration Camps, who was answerable to Heydrich. The Pohl-Himmler empire was
run from the Unter den Eichen at Berlin-Lichterfelde, and Glücks-Heydrich
Inspectorate from Oranienburg, very close to Sachenhausen.
Heydrich intended
the concentration camps to be merely places where undesirables were eliminated
and to a very great extent this is what they remained, even after his death in
1942. Himmler, though equally ready to murder their defenceless inmates, saw the
opportunity of extracting saleable produce from their toil before they
died.
During the period of Ziereis' command at Mauthausen some fifty-seven
sub-camps and sub-sub commands were to grow up as offshoots from the main camp.
Two of them, Gusen and Ebensee, grew almost to rival Mauthausen itself, while
twenty-nine others became quite large. Ziereis also had a loose connection with
the castle of Hartheim.
Theodor Eicke, whose power was so great that he was
able to form his own army. This was known as the Totenkopfverbände (death
head units), whose members became concentration camp guards. [This is not quite
correct, part of them became a ferocious fighting unit almost all of them,
especially on the eastern front during the war,sic] At the outbreak of the war
Eicke moved into action with his Units and the Inspectorate was entrusted to
Glücks. A core of these Totenkopfverbände members remained in control at
all times in the camps. The SS garrison at Mauthausen consisted of them plus
about hundred former army and air force personnel. The SS/Prisoner ratio was
never less than 1:10 in Mauthausen and its dependencies. [PS 2176(209), J.A.D.
3rd US Army, sic]
TheSS-prisoner ratio could only be maintained at this
level if prisoners functionaries took charge of the internal administration of
the camp These were known as Prominenten and were chosen by the SS
because of their particular abilities in one direction or another. Those with a
knowledge of Slav languages and an ability to translate often obtained positions
in the records section of the camp. Prisoner doctors, dentists and lawyers all
came into the Prominenten category. The SS tended to respect them and up
to a point protect them in order to maintain some semblance of a smooth-running
organisation in the camp. They themselves supervised the work of the
Prominenten and saw to it that they had no Kapo overseers over
them.

"Battered inmate photographed by the SS during the operation of Mauthausen"

Kapo overseers were drawn principally from
the criminal class of prisoners. They were often ignorant, crude and base and
were selected by the SS for their brutality. Under Commandant Sauer's regime
they were tutored in beating the prisoners with long rubberized hoses. They wore
black armband of arbitrary power, which gave them a licensed outlet for their
frustration and mental disorders. They terrorised the helpless prisoners over
whom they were given control. They also had endless opportunities for working a
black market, pilfering and receiving bribes. There was no love lost between
them and the Prominenten, with whom they should on no account be
confused.
The prison functionaries had not only sufficient food to eat in
the main camp, but according to Hans Marsalek, there were 20-30 "Prominerte" who
never touched a normal prison food. They ate, often in the company of the SS
block leaders, especially for them prepared meals, from potato pancakes to
roasted hare (gespickter Hasenbraten) at covered tables in separate rooms. The
clothing set them apart as well from the other prisoners. The camp clerk
Leitzinger had a made ​​to measure prison uniform. Central the prisoner
functionaries activities were the emerging barter system, involving the more
corrupt SS-men, who conducted trade with the civilian population at the outside.
It was a simple method of pilfering valuables out of the Holding Store from
prisoner belongings and obtain luxury goods, alcohol and drugs, which
Leitzinger enjoyed.

About Me

Dachau-Ost, (now living in Auckland), Bavaria=Bayern (Manukau City), New Zealand

It is well known that Dachau is located just North of Munich, Germany. I lived in the old SS-Hospital Haus.No 52B for 10 years. I did publish my German ID but had to delete certain entries due to Identity Theft. I am now living in New Zealand since 1956 my country of adoption, still married at the age of 85 with three great grand children,have three sons and a number of relations in America, Australia, Switzerland and Germany. Otherwise of reasonable heath, although slow in my movements. My hobbies: Travelling to other countries meeting and trying to understand other cultures, supporting a school of street kids in India for the last 25 years.